Not sure what to write here. I feel like my life is getting into a normal rhythm again. I still want snacks sometimes. Saw some cinnamon rolls in Sam’s Club and got sad for a moment.
But I have to post something, or else the little voice in my head won’t give me the good chemicals.
So I’m going to complain about a piece of media I watched recently. No, it’s not about the podcast where we watch Academy Award winning movies, despite how poor some of them are in areas where they didn’t win (and sometimes a lukewarm area where they did). No, I’m going to complain about an anime on the internet.
Before you get out your most elegant straightjacket and roll out the red carpet to the limestone oubliette in your basement, I understand that complaining about an anime is fairly commonplace online, and especially this one. But I saw it recently, it made me upset, and I have to vent.
I’m sure that I’m not the target audience for Sword Art Online. To recap for those who have no idea what that is, it’s a show where video game technology has progressed so far that people can log into a virtual reality game from home, and play it with other people. In addition, the man who made the game rigged it so that once you log in, you can’t log out, and when you die in the game, you die for real. The main character is the best at the game, has unique skills that make him very strong, and the girls like him. So in all, it’s a show designed more for teenagers than adults that can piece these plot points together. I’m aware of that, I wasn’t expecting Fullmetal Alchemist, or Death Note, or something with deeper, serious themes. Think more along the lines of My Hero Academia, but a bit more serious. Also, if you want to understand anime, those three are pretty good standouts in some of the main genres that aren’t the weird and creepy genres.
Anyways, Main Character Boy defeats Evil Bad Man, but then Other Evil Bad Man kidnaps Generically Attractive Girl so she doesn’t get to leave the virtual world like everyone else who was trapped there for two years and he has to go into a different virtual game that’s about faeries instead of swords, and we’ve definitely fixed the problem with people dying in the real world this time, to save her. And he does, yay, and that’s season 1.
Season 2, Generically Attractive Girl and Main Character Boy are playing Game 2 when he gets a call from The Government. Apparently, there’s another another virtual game that’s about guns instead of faeries and swords, and despite the claims that they’ve definitely fixed the problem with people dying in the real world, someone is killing people in the real world, and only his Mildly Bullshit Skills, Awkward Stammering Around Girls, and Giant Neon Sign Stating “Shoot Me, Bad Guys” can save the day. But it’s not him I’m complaining about. It’s Generically Attractive Girl 3 (or is it 4, there’s a few of them in this show).
Full disclosure, I don’t know much about trauma. I’ve been pretty lucky to not experience it heavily myself, and I haven’t had much in the line of serious conversations with other people about it, so this is based on “does this make sense in general”. But here we go.
When she was middle school age, she was in a store that got robbed. The guy robbing the place had a gun, and she tried to save her dad by biting the bad guy. She wrestled the gun from him, and in the struggle, she shot him dead. You with me so far?
Unsurprisingly, having killed someone at a young age, and not being part of some deep Italian mafia (well, it’s a Japanese show, so it would be Yakuza, but whatever), she now is horribly terrified of guns. Someone points finger guns at her, and she freezes. A bit much, but OK.
She has a toy gun in her top dresser drawer, and at one point, pulls it out and holds it, apparently to see if this time, she won’t have a screaming mental breakdown. She has a screaming mental breakdown. This backstory is starting to get questionable.
In order to try and desensitize herself to guns, she starts playing this virtual world game about shooting people. She’s very good at it, discusses gun specs clearly and correctly, and sounds very cold and calculating when discussion killing people. This is where I started to have problems, and it’s something that’s pretty easy to do when you’re writing. You get two good ideas, and you put them both in the story, but you forget about how those ideas interact with each other. You can’t have a character both traumatized by firearms, but also who has clearly done the research into how guns work, and is fine discussing shooting people, even if it’s virtual.
Also, the main villain’s name, when translated into English, is Death Gun, so this isn’t exactly an intellectual show.
Song of the Week: Attack on Titan Opening Theme by Linked Horizon. This is from another anime, and while I’m not 100% on the content of the show, the opening song is really good. Also, while it’s common for these opening themes to have a bit of English to go along with the Japanese, the use of German is very interesting. Translated lyrics can be found here, in case you want to make sure that what you’re hearing isn’t too weird.
That's Pretty NEET 